


Name Day

by Dark Automaton (0Dark_Automaton0)



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: Coming Out, Family Feels, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Name Changes, Trans Male Character, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 21:02:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20982323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Dark_Automaton0/pseuds/Dark%20Automaton
Summary: A name is a gift, but sometimes a gift doesn't quite fit.





	1. Holiday Gift

“Baba…” the child tugged on her apron shyly, “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” the old woman said, running her long fingers idly through the child’s long red hair.

“Why did you name me ‘Klara’?” It seemed an innocent enough start.

“When you were born, the night was clearer than it had been in years, like the stars had cleared the smog just to meet you,” she said, her broad smile white as her hair, though missing a few teeth as it were, “Why do you ask, _solnyshka_?”

“Um, can you give me another one?” the child’s face was smothered into the fabric of the apron, almost in shame.

The woman’s pale, greyed hand brushed the hair from the child’s reddened face, and let their eyes meet. What she saw was fear, shame, and perhaps the slightest twinge of hope. It broke her heart to see her little piece of wonder so scared. This wasn’t just a petty request of a selfish six-year-old, she could feel it in her bones.

“What kind of name?”

“A story.”

“A story?”

“Like the first one you gave me.”

The old woman thought and thought, an thought some more. She knew what kind of name her little _kotik_ was asking for – how had she not realized it before? Little girls don’t try to pee standing – but nothing seemed good enough. She had to admit, “Klara” was just off the top of her head, but as she thought, something clicked.

“Have I told you about your grandfather?”

“Grandfather?”

“Borislav,” the old woman began, leaning in with a conspiratory whisper, “I have never told your father this, but your grandfather was an absolute madman. When we first met, he was trudging through the mountains in just a tuxedo, looking for a place to hide.”

“Why?” the child cocked his head, eyes wide in curiosity.

“His parents tried making him marry some rich girl, but he didn’t like her,” she said, shaking her head, “He ran from the ceremony and was trying very hard to not get shot by her father. So, taking pity on the poor fool, I helped him.”

“And you kissed?”

“No,” the woman huffed a laugh, “I slapped him in his face. A couple years later we kissed. That takes time.”

“So, I’m Borislav now?”

“I was thinking just Boris,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind his hear, “Can’t have you going by the same name. He was a little infamous.”

The boy gave her a wide smile and wrapped his little arms around her legs, and she couldn’t help but smile too.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

“No, no,” she assured him, carefully leaning down to pick him up, “Your name was like a sweater; you don’t have to keep it if it doesn’t fit. You can give it to someone else if you’d like.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“… Will you tell mom and dad?”

“If it makes you happy, yes.”


	2. Regifting

“_You can give it to someone else_.”

The memory of his name day was fuzzy, at best, though it left a warm, fuzzy spot in Boris’ heart, as cold and heavy as it felt most of the time.

He held the folded, crumpled paper and pinned it at the “joints” of his creation. He didn’t quite know what he was doing; he recalled vaguely of his _babushka_ doing something similar with paper birds when he was but a little boy. He closed his eyes and thought carefully about what the paper “person” would be like; who they would be, what they would love, what they would fear…

He opened his eyes. Nothing.

The face scrawled so crudely yet lovingly did not hold his gaze, and the body was limp in his hands. He dug his fingers into his hair and huffed a frustrated grunt. Surely that was it; what did he miss?

He stood up from his desk, knocking the creaky chair aside, and rifled through the books she left him. Old dusty tomes that held nothing but herbal remedies and “pagan bullshit” as his father called it. Her journal was perhaps the most loved of her special “recipe books,” the leather binding worn soft over years of study. The remedies inside saved quite a few of his patients from allergic reactions, though he imagined not all of them would be approved by his peers.

He stopped on one of her “ritual” pages and huffed a short laugh in triumph. He found it!

He scanned the page carefully, slowly translating the old Russian cursive as he read,

“_Like making child, paper doll needs little bit of creator to come to life_.”

He looked between the old inky scrawl and the doll. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He inspected the page closer and found nothing more on the matter.

Boris settled back into his desk chair with a sigh, before perking up. Quickly, he jerked open the drawer under the desk, taking the ratty diary from under letters of complaint from past patients. It was from his college days, back when he was first learning about medicine from "official" and "regulated" sources. It was a time of hope, dreary though it was at the time.

He tore out a couple pages, and carefully unfolding the torso of the doll, he folded the pages into the cavity and closed it up.

He tried the “special thinking” again. Who is this? What are they like? What are they for? What is their name….? He tried remembering the old gift his _baba_ gave him, oh so many years ago.

“Carla.”

The doll twitched.

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of this kinda big AU/headcanon thing where Habit's weirdness is explained by him being the grandson of a Baba Yaga/Slavic witch. His dad thought that his child actually being a boy would exempt him from the weirdness of the creepy mountain witch genes, but as we can see, that's not the case. I might make more on this later.


End file.
